Brother Hitler

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Contemporary print of the 1939 essay in the exile magazine " Das neue Tage-Buch "

Brother Hitler is an essay by Thomas Mann , written from April 4 to 21, 1938 (in Beverly Hills , California) and from August 1 to September 4, 1938 (in Küsnacht , Switzerland). The first print was entitled »The Brother. Diary sheets. «(1938). The signatures have been withdrawn. Only a few have survived. The second publication appeared in English on March 3, 1939 under the title "That man is my brother" in the Chicago magazine " Esquire ". The illustration shows the booklet in which the third version was published under the final title "Brother Hitler"

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The leitmotif of Adolf Hitler as a revenant of the essayistic self, which is already evoked by the title , is controversial to this day, facing this as a "messed up" artist. In contrast to his brother Heinrich Mann, who was politically active at an early age, Thomas had come to the fore through his major programmatic essay, Considerations of an Unpolitical (1918). Now he presented himself and Hitler as kindred spirits. Structurally, this figure of thought shows a dualism characteristic of Thomas Mann's essay writing. Already in Goethe and Tolstoy (1921) he describes the two dissimilar writers as a “brotherly couple”. In this context, the fact that he names Hitler and himself in a similar way may be astonishing. The text, which is just over seven printed pages, therefore begins with a self-declaration. It reflects the difficulty of admitting the fascination of the "life phenomenon" Hitler. Love and hate are great affects, but the interest that goes beyond them is generally underestimated. “The lad is a disaster; that's no reason not to find his character and fate not interesting ”, it says a little later. A lexicon that is deliberately kept colloquial avoids demonizing Hitler as a phenomenon. Mann describes him as a “permanent asylist” and refers biographically to Hitler's early days in Vienna as a painter and unskilled worker after the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected his application for admission as a student. Hitler, who feels the impotence of the failed artist, has associated himself with the "feelings of inferiority of a defeated people," explains Mann. Fascism analysis and art discussion are related here.

References to the Grimm fairy tales serve to underpin the narrative of the incredible rise of this "dreamer who wins the princess and the whole empire". As with Goethe and Tolstoy , the analogy between Hitler and Mann is based on the common feeling of being chosen, as artists feel, according to Thomas Mann. The key word of the essay is ruin . Hitler is exposed as a messed up artist who has gone through the first stages of a typical artistic career: “The 'not to be accommodated', the 'What do you really want now?', The half-stupid vegetation in the deepest social and spiritual bohemia, the in Basically haughty, basically rejection of any reasonable and honorable activity - on the basis of what? Because of a vague idea of ​​being reserved for something completely indefinable [...] ”. Dealing with Hitler's beginnings as an artist enables Thomas Mann to perceive a sense of self that becomes even more explicit a little later when it is said that Hitler was "a very embarrassing kinship", but "more sincere, cheerful and productive than hatred, if the self- Recognize ”in the other. By presenting Hitler as an anti-artist, he also takes a critical look at his own artist existence. This essay is even more concerned with the depths of the ego than with Hitler, which Mann approaches with essayistic curiosity.

Regarding the reception of the essay: In particular, the leitmotif, the image of the National Socialist enemy as a brother who provokes less hatred than exerting fascination, has found an echo in literature: both Ernst Weiß 'psychological novel Ich, der Augenzeuge (1939) as and Hans Keilsons novel-essay the death of the adversary (1959) emphasize an essential relationship between perpetrator and victim and place the subject in this way to fictional.

Editions (print)

literature

  • Tobias Temming: "Brother Hitler"? On the importance of the political Thomas Mann. Essays and speeches from exile. Scientific publishing house, Berlin 2008 ISBN 3865733778

Web links

Wikiversity: Title page of the first printing under the title: The brother. Diary sheets.  - course materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The brother (online)
  2. ↑ Kurzke, Herrmann and Stephan Stachorski (eds.): Thomas Mann. Essays Volume 1. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 1993, p. 435.
  3. ↑ Contains: Thoughts on the War 1914, About the German Republic 1922, Culture and Socialism 1928, German Speech 1930, Confession to Socialism 1933, Correspondence with Bonn 1936, About the Coming Victory of Democracy 1937, Brother Hitler 1939, The Problem of Freedom 1939, Germany and the Germans 1945, Meine Zeit 1950, address to Hamburg students in 1953